LESS T_T
Arcane
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The Random Adventure Game News Thread
- Thread starter Jaesun
- Start date
And, like with a hydra, fire is the only answer.
trustno1code
Prophet
LESS T_T
Arcane
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A short "text parser driven graphic adventure game" with EGA-ish graphics and spacefaring snails:
The developer is working on "a full game" with these aesthetics, Cascade Quest. Which CryptRat posted about in Upcoming Incline Thread.
The developer is working on "a full game" with these aesthetics, Cascade Quest. Which CryptRat posted about in Upcoming Incline Thread.
MRY
Wormwood Studios
Wonder what walkspeed will be like.
Boleskine
Arcane
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Four days left to support K'NOSSOS. Here is an interview with the developer from AdventureX.
And a general overview of AdventureX.
Dave Gilbert presentation:
And a general overview of AdventureX.
Dave Gilbert presentation:
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https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/22/when-is-it-ok-to-remake-a-classic-game/
When is it OK to remake a classic game?
Adventure game remakes are common. But not everyone likes to see their old favourites revived. Mitch Kocen asked veteran point-and-clickmen Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer, among others, when they think it’s OK to remaster the classics
Without intervention, every video game you have ever loved will eventually become unplayable. The technology that enables the next generation of games cripples the last. At some point, systems simply can’t run slowly enough to support games made decades prior. For many years, it wasn’t possible to (legally) play older games without digging out the old computer gathering dust in your basement. Fortunately, there is a resurgence of classic games on modern hardware. These re-releases often come with new (or improved) graphics and sound, and sometimes include the option to view the game in its original form. Yet some creators are concerned that these changes compromise the game’s original artistic vision.
Ron Gilbert is one of them. The creator of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and Thimbleweed Park says that the sin of re-creating a game’s art is that the original artists made design choices motivated by what the technology allowed at the time. Changing the art undermines those decisions.
“We had limitations back then” recalls Gilbert in an email interview, “and the artist worked magic to make the game work within those limitations. They often turned working within those limitations into an art all its own. When classic games get ‘hi-resed’, you lose all of that.”
Gilbert, who led the design and writing of the Secret of Monkey Island, feels that remastered games should use the original art exclusively. Redecorating a classic game, he says, is like tampering with a black and white movie.
“When I hear about movies being remastered,” he says, “that usually involves going back to the original prints, cleaning them up, maybe correctly color balancing them, but it’s not fundamentally changing the aesthetics of the movie. It’s producing a clean copy of the original. That is what remastering games should be.”
Gilbert is not alone in thinking the original artistic intent matters to gameplay. Loomdesigner Brian Moriarty first made his fantasy adventure game with the 16 colours available to his artists in 1990. But the design decisions they made would clash with the artistic possibilities granted by future technology, as he explains.
“The opening cut scene of Loom ends with Bobbin [the player’s character] standing on a cliff overlooking his village. Beside him is a tree bearing a single leaf. In the original 16-color EGA game, that leaf is the only object in the scene rendered in bright red.
“This is no accident… the leaf was placed there to teach players how to identify interactive objects, and to reinforce the melancholy tone of the game. It also insured that players would take note of the tree itself, which later becomes the boat Bobbin uses to escape the island.”
But when it came time in 1992 to re-release Loom with 256-colour graphics, the art team working on the port overlooked those intentions.
“In their eagerness to exploit the expanded palette,” says Moriarty, “the artist who repainted that scene ‘improved’ it by adding a reddish sunrise glow to the horizon behind the tree. The color gradation is pretty, but it makes the leaf less enticing as a target. Some players may miss it altogether.”
The last leaf of autumn might not seem like a big deal but by 2008, LucasArts had learned this lesson. They tasked producer Craig Derrick to form an internal team named “Heritage” to “reintroduce LucasArts’ back catalog and original IP’s to both new and nostalgic audiences.”
The Heritage initiative included the idea of keeping the original game alongside the remaster and being able to switch between the two during gameplay.
“Once we started getting the original code up and running on the new devices, we discovered we could put the new art on top of the old and then transition between the two seamlessly.
“It was a perfect A-HA moment, a bit of a gimmick, a way for people to see the work we were adding and quite frankly the backbone of the entire project. I honestly don’t see why anyone remastering a classic game today wouldn’t use this idea.”
Tim Schafer agrees. The creator of Grim Fandango, who also worked with Gilbert on the original Secret of Monkey Island, has produced well-received versions of classic LucasArts adventures through his current studio Double Fine Productions, while also working on newer adventures like Broken Age.
“Remastering older titles is an important part of games preservation,” he says, “a satisfying project for the original creators, and nice thing to do for the fans.”
All of Shafer’s remakes include the original game, and he says he tries to ensure that the original creators are involved in the project, at least in some capacity.
“That way the remastered game is true to the original vision, but the players have the ultimate choice about how they want to play.”
Offering this choice to players doesn’t appease everyone. Gilbert still calls it a ‘sin’, sticking to his original analogy and comparing the classic point ‘n’ clicks of the 90s to the Hollywood classics of the 40s.
“It’s true that you can often switch back to the original graphics,” he says, “but that is also true of colorizing black and white movies.
“You can always watch the original, but that doesn’t make colorizing it any less of an artistic sin. Saying you can switch back to the original art feels like a cop-out.”
While Schafer, Derrick and others viewed the remakes as “a nice thing to do” or a way to “springboard the development of new adventure games”, Gilbert questions the motives.
“You have to honestly ask yourself, was this remaster done for artistic reasons or business reasons?”
But if it’s money you’re after, it isn’t always necessary to paint over your past work, according to game preservationist Frank Cifaldi. He has worked with studio Digital Eclipse to create what he describes as “boutique packaging” of older games, like the Mega Man Legacy Collection or The Disney Afternoon Collection.
These are essentially bundles of faithfully emulated games complete with digital copies of old box art or forgotten manuals. It’s these special materials that catch people’s attention, says Cifaldi. It helps that his company make no changes whatsoever to the source material itself.
“It’s not really our place to do anything that wasn’t originally there, even if it’s correcting what we see as a mistake.”
While some classics are well-suited to this treatment, even Cifaldi concedes it isn’t an approach that will work for 95% of videogames.
Even though he feels emulation is the best way to experience a game as it was meant to be played, there remains a perception among players that emulation is a piracy tool. This causes people to “devalue” old games, he says, to the point where selling an emulated game becomes difficult.
“The consumer perception of that is: ‘oh, I can just pirate this. Why are you selling me a rom?’”
Brian Moriarty agrees that a straight remake isn’t always likely to be commercially successful. Buy the Loom creator says that strong special features can add enough value to justify a “purist” re-release, regardless of the fact it is essentially an emulation.
“I’d pay money for an authentic recreation of EGA Monkey Island, accompanied by live commentary by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, Steve Purcell, Mark Ferrari, Aric Wilmunder, Michael Land and the other talented pioneers who put it all together,” he says.
I asked all of my interview subjects if they thought there was a market for classic games that remain ‘un-remastered’. The word that came up most frequently was “niche.” Some gamers do want to play these games exactly as they were, but not many – likely not enough to warrant the substantial licensing and development costs.
However, if we accept that videogames can be art (and I’m not interested in relitigating that argument here) then we have to preserve classic videogames by any means necessary. Ron Gilbert’s comparison of classic games to black and white films is a good way to ground the issue. Some people love to watch classic movies, some even prefer them to modern films. Others lose interest after a few minutes, turned off by the long takes, visual effects or lack of colour. They were raised with a different set of expectations for their entertainment. But a common thread among modern directors is that they love old movies. The same holds true for game developers. The people making modern hits grew up playing classic games and if we lost those games we would feel that absence as strongly as if we lost Citizen Kane or Psycho.
“Vintage games are lenses into the culture that produced them,” says Brian Moriarty “They are also reminders that it’s possible to create significant, influential work with very limited means.”
The argument from creators like Gilbert and preservationists like Cifaldi is valid, but short sighted. From an artistic standpoint, redoing graphics does compromise the original artists’ choices. Creators often bristle when someone else makes changes to their work. But taking such a hard line against redoing graphics might simply contribute to the extinction of classic games. If there’s not enough demand for a “pure” release then a modern remastering with an “original mode” is probably the best option. That practice is likely to continue indefinitely. In forty years, when Windows is as archaic as DOS is now, we might find Portal or Dead Space or Thimbleweed Park preserved in their original form too, as a bonus feature packaged with a VR or holodeck remake. You will be able to embrace the new graphics or hate them, but these projects will, like their counterparts today, essentially future-proof our classic games.
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http://www.pcgamer.com/the-future-of-adventure-games/
They're all douchebags except the two Gilberts.
They're all douchebags except the two Gilberts.
Boleskine
Arcane
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I hate this way of thinking. "Adventure games would be more popular if it weren't for those old dinosaurs and their stupid puzzles!" sounds like an indirect way of saying, "Designing good puzzles is tough, so I'm just going to avoid that altogether and make vague generalizations about older adventure games."
I also disagree with Ron that adventure games are primarily about story. They are primarily about giving the player control to progress the story. It's different than an action, shooter, platformer, strategy, or other type of game that unfolds in real time. What RPGs and adventure games have in common is that the player usually can play and explore at their own pace. That format allows for better and deeper types of storytelling, like Dave explained, but gameplay should always be top priority no matter how simple or complex the mechanics are.
Games like Firewatch or Gone Home are light on puzzles and challenge, but they are still games. Same with Telltale, even if the narrative unfolds linearly and the choice/consequence mechanics are sometimes an illusion. These types of games can coexist with traditional adventure games that put more emphasis on puzzles, even if most modern audiences aren't interested. It goes back to the tired "Why did adventure games die?" discussions. It's simple - improvements in computing technology opened doors for a wider variety of games that emphasized action and faster-paced gameplay over the slower style that adventure games represent.
I don't blame current developers from shifting away from puzzles due to increased time & cost for design and the weak sales of traditional/point-and-click adventures in the current market (which I think is equally or even mainly an issue with the crowded indie market in general). I understand this reasoning even if it depresses me. What I take issue with is the way some of the developers feel the need to go further and declare, "Oh, those archaic puzzles were always rubbish that got in the way of the story!" If that's what they think, I challenge them to show us how they would design good puzzles and integrate them with the narrative.
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MRY
Wormwood Studios
I'll write more about this later, but for the moment, here's my marker:
(1) Adventure developers and fans self-flagellate every year with the same whips ("moon logic" and "fourth walk breaking") irrespective of what adventure games have been made that year. It is crystal clear to me that any adventure game that includes puzzles that are not pure logic puzzles (Myst-like) will always be accused of moon logic by players stumped by the puzzles. But that accusation is totally disconnected from the puzzles' actual logic. For instance, how often do we hear "moon logic" thrown at Amanita Games in which the logic is deliberately nonsensical and the game just consists of clicking and watching? (I love their games in large part because of that playfulness.) Adventure games have largely abandoned difficult (let alone nonsensically difficult) puzzles, and many now have very serious plots -- yet still we get these criticisms.
(2) The desire to slap the adventure game label on non-adventure game is the kind of skin-suiting that drives me nuts.
(1) Adventure developers and fans self-flagellate every year with the same whips ("moon logic" and "fourth walk breaking") irrespective of what adventure games have been made that year. It is crystal clear to me that any adventure game that includes puzzles that are not pure logic puzzles (Myst-like) will always be accused of moon logic by players stumped by the puzzles. But that accusation is totally disconnected from the puzzles' actual logic. For instance, how often do we hear "moon logic" thrown at Amanita Games in which the logic is deliberately nonsensical and the game just consists of clicking and watching? (I love their games in large part because of that playfulness.) Adventure games have largely abandoned difficult (let alone nonsensically difficult) puzzles, and many now have very serious plots -- yet still we get these criticisms.
(2) The desire to slap the adventure game label on non-adventure game is the kind of skin-suiting that drives me nuts.
MRY
Wormwood Studios
Okay, to elaborate.
The "moon logic" criticism is simultaneously irrefutably true and a narcissistic lie. It's true because "logic" in this context doesn't mean formal logic (which is universal) but practical reasoning (which is personal). Everyone's practical reasoning ability is shaped by their life experiences. To the extent "moon logic" means "this might be logical on the moon, but it's not logical on earth" (which is what I've taken it to mean), it is absolutely true. MRY logic is "earth logic" only within my own egocentric universe; every one person's logic is "moon logic" as they orbit about me, some closer, some farther, some on regular orbits that are always close to me or far from me, and some on eccentric orbits that may be close sometimes but also far sometimes. As a result, puzzles that are designed to be solved with my practical reasoning (which is how inevitably I will design puzzles) will be moon logic to other players, and depending on how different we are (for instance, if a player has no background in adventure games), it might be a very distant moon indeed.
So far, so true.
But the thing is, when people say that something is "moon logic" they often mean its logic is wrong or unrealistic. Thus, a puzzle where you impersonate a delivery man by wearing a cat-fur mustache is "moon logic," whereas a puzzle where you pick a lock using a lockpick is "logical." But here's a funny thing. No one ever calls an obvious puzzle, no matter how "moon logical" it is, "moon logic." Instead, it is a pejorative used for a puzzle that gets a player stuck irrespective of whether it is logical or not. There's no reason why "logic" and "stickiness" have to be on the same axis. For instance, if there's a wall with a big sign that says, "Pour black paint here to make a cave entrance" that's a very easy puzzle (assuming the black paint is easy to get), and it's a nice cultural reference to Roadrunner cartoons, but it's not "logical" at all. Yet you would never hear that puzzle called "moon logic." Conversely, the puzzles in Codename: Iceman or Police Quest II would (I suspect) get called "moon logic" all the time now, even though they are actually pretty rigorously realistic and "logical." They're just really "sticky."
It turns out that "pour black paint on wall to make a cave," while "fourth wall breaking," isn't "moon logic," while, "fill out all the necessary paperwork while logging evidence" "makes no damn sense."
This is why I say that "moon logic" is a narcissistic lie -- it is the substitution of, "This is incomprehensible" for "I cannot comprehend it" -- the need to situate the flaw in the object rather than the subject so as to preserve the subject's self-worth. Of course, a game that inflicts narcissistic injuries on the player (or requires the player to avert such injuries) is often not going to be well loved. And a game designer's job is to make the player better, not to make him feel worse about himself. Still...
Both of these whips are wrong, but there is a thread of truth woven into them.
The problem with adventure games is "stickiness." I really don't know any other game -- except for the occasional brutally hard action game -- where a player's mode experience (i.e., most common experience) is that he cannot advance in the game because he has no idea how to advance, and the process of figuring out how doesn't involve exploring new areas. No other game I can think of is like that. In an RPG, you might not be able to solve a given quest or beat a given boss, but you always have ideas about where else you can go, what else you can do (grind if nothing else, or save-scum a better dice roll).
But in an adventure game, all the time you are stuck because you missed a point of interaction. The thing is, if you missed it the first time, there's a pretty good likelihood you'll miss it the second -- because for whatever idiosyncratic reason, the player's attention wasn't drawn to it. Maybe it wasn't something that interested him, maybe he's got some level of color blindness, but having missed it once, he'll miss it again, and again and again. Puzzles work the same way. Most adventure game puzzles aren't the kind of puzzles you tinker with and get better with; either you make the leap of logic or you don't. If you don't, the game has to cue you some way; but finding those cues is often repetitious and tedious.
The real problem with an adventure game is that while solving a puzzle is satisfying, being unable to solve a puzzle utterly sucks because overwhelmingly you can't solve it because you missed a puzzle piece along the way (an item; a hotspot; a leap of logic). You aren't fiddling until you get an "aha!" You're scrutinizing scenes you already went through, or spamming items, or repeating dialogue trees. Unlike other games where you overcome hard obstacles through self-betterment (either the avatar's self through leveling up, or the player's self by developing the twitch skills or tactical insights necessary), in adventure games you overcome hard obstacles by coincidence (i.e., the coincidence of sharing the designer's logic enough to have picked up the pieces), by rote, by luck...
The second problem relates to adventure games' narrative, and this is the fourth wall's thread of truth: adventure game puzzles rigorously grounded in real world tools behaving in predictable ways are much less fun than puzzles with cartoonish exaggerations, where you can lampshade the weirdness of adventure games and rely on stronger cues. There's a good reason why the spitting contest, voodoo doll, etc. are so memorable. But this pushes games into a particular kind of setting and narrative that is increasingly viewed askance -- in every medium (whether fantasy novels, comic books, or vidya) there is a push toward realism and seriousness instead of exaggeration and fun. Adventure games are at a disadvantage in telling those kinds of stories.
Anyway, these are serious problems with the genre, but they're problems that have always been there, and yet people have always loved these games. And I'm not sure they are problems to be solved. Because with puzzles, for instance, while the "mode" experience with puzzles may be kind of crappy, when you do solve a puzzle (without cheating), it's a remarkable feeling, different from the feeling of solving a logic puzzle or a difficult level -- part of it, I think, is that you have reached out across the void of space and shaken hands with a man on another planet. "You and I both think that cutting off a giant robot's finger and shoving it up his nostril is a reasonable strategy for getting him to open his mouth." In fact, I think that shared experience is part of the reason for the kinship that adventure game players have long felt with adventure game designers, one that I doubt a walking simulator can equal.
The "moon logic" criticism is simultaneously irrefutably true and a narcissistic lie. It's true because "logic" in this context doesn't mean formal logic (which is universal) but practical reasoning (which is personal). Everyone's practical reasoning ability is shaped by their life experiences. To the extent "moon logic" means "this might be logical on the moon, but it's not logical on earth" (which is what I've taken it to mean), it is absolutely true. MRY logic is "earth logic" only within my own egocentric universe; every one person's logic is "moon logic" as they orbit about me, some closer, some farther, some on regular orbits that are always close to me or far from me, and some on eccentric orbits that may be close sometimes but also far sometimes. As a result, puzzles that are designed to be solved with my practical reasoning (which is how inevitably I will design puzzles) will be moon logic to other players, and depending on how different we are (for instance, if a player has no background in adventure games), it might be a very distant moon indeed.
So far, so true.
But the thing is, when people say that something is "moon logic" they often mean its logic is wrong or unrealistic. Thus, a puzzle where you impersonate a delivery man by wearing a cat-fur mustache is "moon logic," whereas a puzzle where you pick a lock using a lockpick is "logical." But here's a funny thing. No one ever calls an obvious puzzle, no matter how "moon logical" it is, "moon logic." Instead, it is a pejorative used for a puzzle that gets a player stuck irrespective of whether it is logical or not. There's no reason why "logic" and "stickiness" have to be on the same axis. For instance, if there's a wall with a big sign that says, "Pour black paint here to make a cave entrance" that's a very easy puzzle (assuming the black paint is easy to get), and it's a nice cultural reference to Roadrunner cartoons, but it's not "logical" at all. Yet you would never hear that puzzle called "moon logic." Conversely, the puzzles in Codename: Iceman or Police Quest II would (I suspect) get called "moon logic" all the time now, even though they are actually pretty rigorously realistic and "logical." They're just really "sticky."
It turns out that "pour black paint on wall to make a cave," while "fourth wall breaking," isn't "moon logic," while, "fill out all the necessary paperwork while logging evidence" "makes no damn sense."
This is why I say that "moon logic" is a narcissistic lie -- it is the substitution of, "This is incomprehensible" for "I cannot comprehend it" -- the need to situate the flaw in the object rather than the subject so as to preserve the subject's self-worth. Of course, a game that inflicts narcissistic injuries on the player (or requires the player to avert such injuries) is often not going to be well loved. And a game designer's job is to make the player better, not to make him feel worse about himself. Still...
Both of these whips are wrong, but there is a thread of truth woven into them.
The problem with adventure games is "stickiness." I really don't know any other game -- except for the occasional brutally hard action game -- where a player's mode experience (i.e., most common experience) is that he cannot advance in the game because he has no idea how to advance, and the process of figuring out how doesn't involve exploring new areas. No other game I can think of is like that. In an RPG, you might not be able to solve a given quest or beat a given boss, but you always have ideas about where else you can go, what else you can do (grind if nothing else, or save-scum a better dice roll).
But in an adventure game, all the time you are stuck because you missed a point of interaction. The thing is, if you missed it the first time, there's a pretty good likelihood you'll miss it the second -- because for whatever idiosyncratic reason, the player's attention wasn't drawn to it. Maybe it wasn't something that interested him, maybe he's got some level of color blindness, but having missed it once, he'll miss it again, and again and again. Puzzles work the same way. Most adventure game puzzles aren't the kind of puzzles you tinker with and get better with; either you make the leap of logic or you don't. If you don't, the game has to cue you some way; but finding those cues is often repetitious and tedious.
The real problem with an adventure game is that while solving a puzzle is satisfying, being unable to solve a puzzle utterly sucks because overwhelmingly you can't solve it because you missed a puzzle piece along the way (an item; a hotspot; a leap of logic). You aren't fiddling until you get an "aha!" You're scrutinizing scenes you already went through, or spamming items, or repeating dialogue trees. Unlike other games where you overcome hard obstacles through self-betterment (either the avatar's self through leveling up, or the player's self by developing the twitch skills or tactical insights necessary), in adventure games you overcome hard obstacles by coincidence (i.e., the coincidence of sharing the designer's logic enough to have picked up the pieces), by rote, by luck...
The second problem relates to adventure games' narrative, and this is the fourth wall's thread of truth: adventure game puzzles rigorously grounded in real world tools behaving in predictable ways are much less fun than puzzles with cartoonish exaggerations, where you can lampshade the weirdness of adventure games and rely on stronger cues. There's a good reason why the spitting contest, voodoo doll, etc. are so memorable. But this pushes games into a particular kind of setting and narrative that is increasingly viewed askance -- in every medium (whether fantasy novels, comic books, or vidya) there is a push toward realism and seriousness instead of exaggeration and fun. Adventure games are at a disadvantage in telling those kinds of stories.
Anyway, these are serious problems with the genre, but they're problems that have always been there, and yet people have always loved these games. And I'm not sure they are problems to be solved. Because with puzzles, for instance, while the "mode" experience with puzzles may be kind of crappy, when you do solve a puzzle (without cheating), it's a remarkable feeling, different from the feeling of solving a logic puzzle or a difficult level -- part of it, I think, is that you have reached out across the void of space and shaken hands with a man on another planet. "You and I both think that cutting off a giant robot's finger and shoving it up his nostril is a reasonable strategy for getting him to open his mouth." In fact, I think that shared experience is part of the reason for the kinship that adventure game players have long felt with adventure game designers, one that I doubt a walking simulator can equal.
A Room Beyond is available on the "Indie Pack 5" (GreenManGaming) for $1.99/1,99€, among 9 other titles, most of them adventure games: Mainlining, Tick's Tales, Hidden Mysteries: Civil War, Hidden Mysteries: Titanic, Lost Civilization, A Land Fit For Heroes, Goosebumps, Star Vikings Forever and The Uncertain: Episode 1.
A Land Fit For Heroes is a small RPG some of you might like, although it's been bundled several times before. CryptRat did you end up playing it?
MRY
Wormwood Studios
Did I say that?
trustno1code
Prophet
LESS T_T
Arcane
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Boleskine
Arcane
- Joined
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Ben wrote another article.
https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/34202
[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
A Look at Graphics: Shaping Perceptions
Written by Ben Chandler — December 13, 2017
I've written at some length about the way artists can use light and colour to tell their stories, and to construct a sense of atmosphere and a particular mood, whether from a particular object or from an entire scene. It's one of the most effective visual elements to keep in mind when designing scenery but it's not the only way to create mood, or to be suggestive of ideas. In fact, artists have a range of tools available to work with. The “form” – or shape – of an image can be powerful, memorable and evocative, as we looked at earlier when examining character designs in silhouette. In scenery it's also powerful, beyond merely being descriptive of the objects represented. Though it's easy to think of the shape of something as a noun (as in “this is a couch”), the artist's approach to creating that form can also make it an adjective (as in “this is an expensive couch”).
(Click on any image for a complete gallery of larger versions)
Something as simple as a door, for example, can convey information to the player. The door here, from The Blackwell Epiphany, is quite obviously a church door. The shape, coupled with the architecture that frames it, is of a type that's familiar enough to give a clear sense of where this door will lead. It wasn't feasible for us to show the whole church in this scene, but because this form is so recognisable, a doorway sufficed.
Coming back, yet again, to this opening shot from Technobabylon, we see very simple forms. The circles surrounding the character suggest an artificial 'perfection' one doesn't commonly find in organic forms, with noticeably squarish chunks taken out, reminiscent of pixels and disk sectors. The shape the character cuts in the middle was based loosely on the famous 'Vitruvian Man' image that describes ideal proportions of a human figure – a perfect visual counterpoint to narration that describes the perfection of self one can achieve when assuming a digital identity.
On the other hand, this scene from Unavowed is host to a quirky, creative character with a flair for the unusual. I tried to make the architecture here suggestive of this – irregular patterns, over-embellishment and a general looseness of shape design in the scene were ways for me to try to complement the subject matter of this location.
One of my favourite early examples of an artist using the shape of things in a scene to reinforce the mood is this cave from King's Quest IV, which has clearly been designed in the shape of a skull, complete with alcoves for the eye sockets. It's a dangerous, spooky moment in the game, with intense gameplay, and having the scene constructed from an iconic form like this is a great way to embellish that, even with the limited technology Sierra was using at the time.
Another great example is this shot from Loom, a scene I come back to again and again. 'Never would have guessed' replies Bobbin to Rusty's comment about the nature of their guild, a nod to the bold anvil shaped structure that serves as their headquarters. Not only is this informative, it's also memorable and iconic; a massive building that takes the shape of an anvil isn't something easily forgotten. Much like with the character designs in silhouettes, this is a building I'd recognize from its outline alone.
Having such a bold shape that stands out in the distance is very powerful – notice here how obvious this building from Dreamfall seems, both from its colour and its uneven, wonky shape among the straight, clean ice crystal around it. Such a shape tells us, even from so far away, that something is wrong here, that things aren't as they should be. It's a testament to the power of carefully designed structures that we can 'read' a building from these kinds of distances, and it's not inaccurate to say that they have character and a feeling about them. In this way, an artist can tell us a wealth of information about a building before we ever set foot inside.
Whereas the last scene contrasts the main structure with the rest of the surroundings to make its form more powerful, this scene from Duke Grabowski uses the surroundings to reinforce the idea, and we see a great use of repetition of an idea. The assorted massive skeletons, replete with fangs, horns and talons, are a clear hint: this is not a safe place. Without knowing any story, without hearing the ominous music, or being warned away from this place by a character in the game, one look and the figures here tell us what this scene is about, and how we should feel as a result.
Another great use of repetition is evident here in this shot from The Inner World: The Last Wind Monk. Littered about the backdrop are the repeated symbols of the 'Conroyalists', an unfriendly group that has us on the run, and having their logo repeated so often helps to reinforce the danger we're in. Symbols and logos are great because they allow decorating anything with a shape whose meaning is instantly apparent if we know the context. In this way, the shape seen so many times throughout this image is not as instantly evocative as some of the others, but it's still a clear example of the power of a specific design in art.
Another fun example of a repeating form is visible in this scene from Broken Age, where the walls and floors of the spaceship are decorated in hexagons. These are a fun shape – they suggest technology, a love of geometry, and even the confining walls of a beehive. Done in pastel colours, and complemented with the bright, geometric kitchen decor that is redolent of children's building blocks, the designs here take the various aspects of the setting and combine them in a lovely way.
Hexagons are also used in The Witness, a game with a bountiful supply of symbolic shapes. Beyond the many fun examples one can find in the environmental decorations, the very stones of this world are often presented in geometric shapes most likely inspired by the famous Giant's Causeway of Ireland. Here, though, they suggest the hand of a designer, a sense of patterns in nature, and the pervasion of geometry, all very appropriate in this game.
The appreciation of the power of shape and design like this is very empowering. Too often one's first sketch of a chair will be just a chair, a door just a door. By employing design skills, by knowing the context of the scene being drawn, and by observing the relevance and significance of particular shapes throughout popular culture and history, an artist can elevate the impact of their work, and therein further engage their audience. Visual language is, like all languages, a means of communicating ideas, and as the elegant cursive or furious scrawl of a note can convey the mood of the writer, the very shape(s) of our world can tell our players volumes.
LESS T_T
Arcane
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- Oct 5, 2012
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